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Our mission is to promote a sustainable economy by advancing the Ecological
Footprint, a measurement tool that makes the reality of planetary limits
relevant to decision-makers.

The paper documents the latest method for calculating the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity of nations, resulting in the National Footprint Accounts (NFAs) of more than 200 countries and for the world overall.

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Results are also compared with those obtained from previous editions of the NFA. According to the 2011 Edition of the National Footprint Accounts, humanity used ecological resources and services equivalent to that of 1.5 Earths in 2008 (the last year for which data are available), compared with only 0.7 Earths in 1961.

Each new edition of the National Footprint Accounts supports the conclusion that we are in global ecological overshoot, where total demand for ecological resources and services exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate these resources and to sequester humanity’s carbon emissions, resulting in resource depletion and the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.